IIRC, the poverty line in the US is the cost of food, multiplied by three. Minimum wage can be below this, depending on region and number of dependents. Povert

IIRC, the poverty line in the US is the cost of food, multiplied by three. Minimum wage can be below this, depending on region and number of dependents. Poverty is defined by the means you can afford, and if that meets some rough threshold of basic necessities (food, shelter, possibly transportation, etc). In a perfect world where policy is defined justly and the economy can support it without repercussions, the minimum wage would be defined by the poverty line, no the other way around. In the real world, there's no fundamental reason why the minimum salary in an economy would pass any particular bare-minimum lifestyle threshold. I believe the magic number three was derived from one study decades ago, that found that food accounted for one-third of poor people's spending on average. There is no reason to think it has remained constant, or that it is stable to begin with, but that became the formula used in the US.